Earth's Oldest Rock

Earth's Oldest Known Rock Was Found On the Moon

Photo: NASA

A lot of the rocks we have on Earth aare pretty old, but none of them were around when our planet was first formed. The Earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest rocks we’ve ever found are a little over half that age. That seems to have changed, however, because a group of scientists recently announced they’ve found a rock that formed only half a billion years after the Earth itself. The twist is that this particular rock wasn’t discovered on Earth at all. It was found on the moon.


The rock itself was discovered decades ago by the Apollo 14 crew. The Apollo missions brought back a whole lot of rock samples, and scientists have been methodically analyzing them ever since. This one seems to have been somewhere near the end of the list, but it may be the most interesting one ever found.


According to the analysis, this rock formed somewhere between 4 and 4.1 billion years ago, about 12.4 miles beneath the Earth’s crust. Researchers knew it came from the Earth based on the amount of various minerals like quartz and feldspar, which are common on Earth but rare on the Moon. They could tell how deep it was based on a molecular analysis of the rock, which can tell the researchers what temperature the rock was at when it formed.

Technically, it’s possible that this rock could have formed on the moon, but it would have been one heck of a coincidence. The rock would have to be made of an extremely high amount of earth minerals and an extremely low amount of minerals common on the moon, something not found in any other moon rock samples. And it would have to have formed in the moon’s core, then somehow make it to the surface.

But is it any less of a coincidence that an Earth rock could have ended up on the moon? Actually, yes. After all, the moon itself was once a piece of Earth, until it was forcefully ejected into orbit by a collision with a particularly large asteroid early in our planet’s history. We’ve even found pieces of Mars falling to the ground here on Earth after they were kicked into space by an impact. 


It’s not hard to imagine, in the early years of our Solar System when large asteroids were everywhere, that one of them hit the Earth and sent debris flying into space. At least some of that debris could have easily ended up on the Moon.


Before this discovery, we had to guess at what the rocks of the early Earth looked like, but now we have a much better idea. And there’s a good chance that this isn’t the only Earth rock sitting on our lunar neighbor. We may even have more earth rocks collected from other Apollo missions.


If we ever go back to the moon again, we might find more Earth samples lying around the surface. Returning to the moon is almost worth it for that reason alone.


The above story is based on materials provided by Curtin University.

Largest Diamond Found

The New Largest Pink Diamond Found

Image: ALROSA.

Russia’s Alrosa, the world’s top diamond producer by output in carats, has unearthed 27.85-carat pink precious rock the company believes could be the most expensive it has ever found.


The miner, majority-owned by the Russian government, said the gem-quality stone was found at its alluvial mines in Russia’s Far East, adding that the largest pink diamond it had previously discovered was less than 4 carats in weight.

The impressive pink rock, measuring 22.47 mm x 15.69 mm x 10.9 mm, has very few flaws and could become the company’s most expensive polished diamond if it decides to cut it, Alrosa said in the statement.


Coloured diamonds, especially pink ones, have been lately setting records in auctions. In April, Sotheby’s sold a 59.6-carat one — the ‘‘Pink Star’’ — for $71.2 million. Until then, the most expensive diamond ever sold at auction was the "Oppenheimer Blue," which fetched 56.8 million Swiss francs (more than $57 million at the time) in May 2016.

The previous world auction record for a pink diamond was $46.2 million for the 24.78 carat "Graff Pink" in 2010.

Alrosa noted that it is currently trying to decide on whether to sell this pink rock as a rough diamond, or cut and polish it.

Why is Red Beryl So Rare?
‘Impossibly Rare’ The Largest Violet Diamond ever found

The above story is based on materials provided by ALROSA.

Scientists Solved The Mystery Of Devils Tower

Scientists Solved the Mystery of How the columns of Devil Tower Formed

Devils Tower

A new study by geo-scientists at the University of Liverpool has identified the temperature at which cooling magma cracks to form geometric columns such as those found at the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and Devils Postpile in the USA.

Geometric columns occur in many types of volcanic rocks and form as the rock cools and contracts, resulting in a regular array of polygonal prisms or columns.

Columnar joints are amongst the most amazing geological features on Earth and in many areas, including the Giant's Causeway, they have inspired mythologies and legends.

One of the most enduring and intriguing questions facing geologists is the temperature at which cooling magma forms these columnar joints.

Liverpool geoscientists undertook a research study to find out how hot the rocks were when they cracked open to form these spectacular stepping stones.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers and students at the University's School of Environmental Sciences designed a new type of experiment to show how as magma cools, it contracts and accumulates stress, until it cracks. The study was performed on basaltic columns from Eyjafjallajökull volcano, Iceland.

They designed a novel apparatus to permit cooling lava, gripped in a press, to contract and crack to form a column. These new experiments demonstrated that the rocks fracture when they cool about 90 to 140?C below the temperature at which magma crystallises into a rock, which is about 980?C for basalts.

This means that columnar joints exposed in basaltic rocks, as observed at the Giant's Causeway and Devils Postpile (USA) amongst others, were formed around 840-890 ?C.

Yan Lavallée, Liverpool Professor of Volcanology who headed the research, said: "The temperature at which magma cools to form these columnar joints is a question that has fascinated the world of geology for a very long time. We have been wanting to know whether the temperature of the lava that causes the fractures was hot, warm or cold.

"I have spent over a decade pondering how to address this question and construct the right experiment to find the answer to this question. Now, with this study, we have found that the answer is hot, but after it solidified."

Dr Anthony Lamur, for whom this work formed part of his doctoral study, added: "These experiments were technically very challenging, but they clearly demonstrate the power and significance of thermal contraction on the evolution of cooling rocks and the development of fractures".

Dr Jackie Kendrick, a post-doctoral researcher in the Liverpool group said: "Knowing the point at which cooling magma fractures is critical, as -beyond leading to the incision of this stunning geometrical feature- it initiates fluid circulation in the fracture network. Fluid flow controls heat transfer in volcanic systems, which can be harnessed for geothermal energy production. So the findings have tremendous applications for both volcanology and geothermal research."

Understanding how cooling magma and rocks contract and fracture is central to understand the stability of volcanic constructs as well as how heat is transferred in the Earth.

Professor Lavallée added: "The findings shed light on the enigmatic observations of coolant loss made by Icelandic engineers as they drilled into hot volcanic rocks in excess of 800?C; the loss of coolant in this environment was not anticipated, but our study suggests that substantial contraction of such hot rocks would have opened wide fractures that drained away the cooling slurry from the borehole.

"Now that we know this, we can revisit our drilling strategy and further our quest for the new development of magma energy sources."


The above story is based on materials provided by University of Liverpool.

Fundamental Finding About Earth's core

Research Reveals "Fundamental Finding" About Earth's Outer Core

Image credit: Argonne National Labs

The Earth’s core is an exceptionally difficult place to study. Its depths descend a staggering 2,900 kilometers — about the distance from New York City to Denver — and its extreme, otherworldly conditions are extraordinarily challenging to simulate in the lab.


For scientists like Florida State University Assistant Professor Mainak Mookherjee and his postdoctoral scholar Suraj Bajgain, whose lives’ work is to penetrate the mysteries hidden in the core’s impossible depths, these are serious and stubborn roadblocks. But in a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Mookherjee and his team used high-powered supercomputing techniques to sidestep these obstacles and make a critical discovery about the core’s chemical composition.


Along with colleagues at Rice University and Louisiana State University, Mookherjee and Bajgain used meticulously calibrated simulations to determine the maximum amount of nitrogen that can possibly exist in the Earth’s outer core: around 2 percent by weight at the core-mantle boundary, and about 2.6 percent by weight at the inner-core boundary.


“This is an insightful exercise because it gives the upper-most bound of nitrogen in the outer core,” Mookherjee said. “We are providing maximum constraint on the abundance of an element that is a major component of the atmosphere of a habitable planet. That’s the fundamental finding.”

Nitrogen is key to organic matter, and how nitrogen is stored in the planet’s rocky and metallic interior is a crucial but elusive piece of information.


“When a planet is forming, size of the planet and how much nitrogen — or any other light element — is sucked into the core is very important,” Mookherjee said. “If you’re thinking of life as organic life, carbon and nitrogen are important constituents. But if all the nitrogen goes into the core, there’s nothing left to fuel organic life.”


Questions of which elements roil in the cauldron of the Earth’s core have long puzzled Earth scientists. Important dissonances in prevailing seismological and geochemical models have gone unexplained, and analyses of meteorites that closely model Earth’s bulk rocky material tend to suggest that we should be seeing more nitrogen in our planet’s interior. These inconsistencies provoke perplexing questions.


“Geochemical evidence often points to the fact that the Earth’s interior might be depleted in terms of nitrogen inventory,” Mookherjee said. “Are we lacking it? Is it hidden in the core? These are unknowns. There are various models, but it’s impossible to access the Earth’s core, and we do not have direct evidence of the planet’s formation process, including redistribution of elements. We’re trying to make inferences by piecing evidence together.”


Mookherjee circumvented the considerable challenges of experimenting at extreme core conditions by simulating those conditions on powerful supercomputers. Using facilities at LSU, as well as the National Science Foundation’s


After a battery of benchmark tests to ensure the simulations were running properly, the team added nitrogen to the system. Their goal was to identify the effects of nitrogen on the density and sound wave velocity of liquid iron at conditions analogous to the Earth’s core — readings that would better allow them to determine the core’s nitrogen content.


Ultimately, the simulations successfully revealed a first-ever, geophysical data-based hint about how much nitrogen might be trapped deep in the Earth’s inhospitable interior.


“Our estimates on the maximum limit of nitrogen in the Earth’s outer core is based on the assumption that Earth’s core is composed of an iron-nitrogen binary mixture, but more research is needed to incorporate the effect of multiple elements alloying with iron,” Mookherjee said.


The above story is based on materials provided by Florida State University.

Meteorite older than Earth

    Australian Geologists Discover Meteorite Older Than Earth

photo: Curtin University

A meteorite fragment believed to be older than Earth itself has been discovered in Australia, and it almost washed away before scientists had a chance to get to it. 

The recovery operation involved a network of 32 remote camera observatories, a mass of complicated geographical calculations, an aerial spotter, a remotely operated drone, two human searchers, and a whole lot of luck.

After some image analysis, triangulation, and other calculations, the search began in earnest around the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre area - the lowest natural point in Australia - on December 29. An unmanned drone and a manned light aircraft were used to guide DFN team members, Phil Bland and Robert Howie from Curtin University, to the correct spot, with the assistance of a local search party.


Three days into the search, they found it: a 1.7-kg (3.7-lb) rock embedded in thick salt lake mud, some 42 cm (16.5 inches) below the surface. If the researchers had been a few days later, heavy rains would've washed away the rock for good.

According to its discoverers, the meteorite fragment is a chondrite or stony meteorite that they estimate to be more than 4.5 billion years old - not a bad innings when you consider that Earth itself has been around for about that amount of time. "It was an amazing team effort - we got there by the skin of our teeth," said Bland.

Not only is it an exciting geological discovery that should eventually teach us more about the origins of the Universe, it's a huge boost for the founders of the Desert Fireball Network scheme. "This meteorite is of special significance as the camera observations used to calculate the fall positions have also enabled the solar system orbit of the meteorite to be calculated, giving important contextual information for future study," added Bland. "It demonstrates beyond doubt that this giant machine that we've built really works."

The researchers believe the rock came from somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, and now the serious work of studying the object can begin. "The fact we have managed to retrieve the meteorite at all is remarkable," said Bland's colleague, Jonathan Paxman. "Our people worked around the clock to reduce the data, enabling rapid recovery of something that would have been lost if we'd gotten there any later."

The above story is based on materials provided by Curtin University.

Cave of Crystals in Naica, Mexico

       Cave of Crystals "Giant Crystal Cave" at Naica, Mexico 

Discovered by chance, the secret Mexican crystal caves big enough to drive a car through


The Naica Mine of state Chihuahua , is a working mine that is best known for its extraordinary selenite crystals. Located in Naica in municipality of Saucillo, the Naca mine is a lead, zinc and silver mine operated by industries penoles, Mexico's largest lead producer. Caverns discovered during mining operations contain crystals of seleminiteas large as four feet in diameter and 50feet long.


Formation of Crystals:

Naica lies on an ancient fault, there is magma chamber below the cave. The magma heated the ground water and it became saturated with minerals , including large quantities of gypsum. The hollow space of the cave was filled with this minerals-rich hot water and remained filled for 500,000 years. During this time the temperature of the water remained very stable at over 52 oC. This allowed crystals to grow to immense sizes.

How did the crystals reach such superheroic proportions:


In the new issue of journal geology, Gracia Ruiz reports that that for millinniea the crystals thrived
in the cave's extremely rare and natural environment. Temperatures hovered consistently around a steamy 136 F and the cave was filled with mineral-rich hot water that drove the crystal's growth.


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